so often interrupted. He took advantage of his increasing influence
to ingratiate himself with the new pacha, and was so successful in
insinuating himself into his confidence, that he was received into the
palace and treated like the pacha's son. There he acquired complete
knowledge of the details of the pachalik and the affairs of the pacha,
preparing himself to govern the one when he had got rid of the other.

The sanjak of Delvino was bounded from Venetian territory by the
district of Buthrotum. Selim, a better neighbour and an abler politician
than his predecessors, sought to renew and preserve friendly commercial
relations with the purveyors of the Magnificent Republic. This wise
conduct, equally advantageous for both the bordering provinces, instead
of gaining for the pacha the praise and favours which he deserved,
rendered him suspected at a court whose sole political idea was hatred
of the name of Christian, and whose sole means of government was terror.
Ali immediately perceived the pacha's error, and the advantage which
he himself could derive from it. Selim, as one of his commercial
transactions with the Venetians, had sold them, for a number of
years, the right of felling timber in a forest near Lake Reloda. Ali
immediately took advantage of this to denounce the pacha as guilty of
having alienated the territory of the Sublime Porte, and of a desire
to deliver to the infidels all the province of Delvino. Masking
his ambitious designs under the veil of religion and patriotism, he
lamented, in his denunciatory report, the necessity under which he found
himself, as a loyal subject and faithful Mussulman, of accusing a
man who had been his benefactor, and thus at the same time gained the
benefit of crime and the credit of virtue.

Under the gloomy despotism of the Turks, a man in any position of
responsibility is condemned almost as soon as accused; and if he is not